POSTSCRIPT
By Federico D. Pascual Jr.
(The Philippine Star) Updated March 31, 2011
INTERFERENCE:
I thought I have closed the page after saying in my
POSTSCRIPT last March 24: “Whatever we think of
Libya, it is a sovereign state whose problem is one of
rebellion, a domestic conflict.
“When a segment of the population takes up arms against
the government, it should expect to get hurt. When the
state, with its right and obligation to defend itself,
reacts and in the process maims or kills some of the
rebels, that is to be expected.
“Rebellion is not a picnic. Rebels cease to be innocent
civilians, they are combatants. When government forces
shoot back, rebels should not complain to the outside
world of being attacked. They have to be attacked. How
else can the government defend itself?
“Now when outsiders, especially countries that have an
axe to grind against Libya or its leader, use the
rebels’ pleas as an excuse to come in not to separate
the combatants as in a peacekeeping effort, but to side
with one party and shoot at the other, I think that is
not right.
“And when the United Nations, which sadly is in the grip
of the Big Boys, allows itself to be used for this
blatant interference in a domestic conflict, that is
even worse.”
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VAGUE NOTION:
Then I came upon this March 28 memo of Prof. Hans
Kochler, president of the International Progress
Organization based in Austria, on UN Resolution 1973
authorizing a “no-fly zone” and “all necessary means” to
protect civilians in Libya torn by a civil war.
Kochler said that the notion “all necessary measures”
that member-states are invited to take “to protect
civilians” and “to enforce compliance with the ban on
flights” is vague and undefined.
He
said, “Imprecise terms will be interpreted according to
the self-interest of the intervening parties and, thus,
can never be the basis of legally justified action… such
terms have often been used as pretext for a virtually
unrestrained use of force.”
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ARBITRARY:
To authorize “all necessary means,” he added, “is an
invitation to an arbitrary and arrogant exercise of
power, and makes the commitment of the United Nations to
the international rule of law void of any meaning.”
He
noted that the Secretaries of Defense and Foreign
Affairs of Great Britain, one of the countries attacking
Libya, had declined to exclude the targeted killing of
the Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi as one of the measures
authorized under Resolution 1973.
But
the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation has
described the resolution — insofar as it allows
everything — as “defective and flawed” and “resembles
medieval calls for crusades.”
Noting that “a medieval hostis declaration has no room
in modern international law,” Kochler said,
“International vigilantism and a humanitarian
free-for-all are elements of anarchy and belong in a
pre-modern system of imperial powers.”
He
said, “The ban on the use of force according to the UN
Charter will become totally meaningless, if every
member-state can effectively use force in pursuit of an
abstract goal in a unilateral manner, and without any
checks and balances.”
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WORSE THREAT:
Kochler said, “The stated goal of the ‘protection of
civilians’ has been implemented by interested
member-states, first and foremost the former colonial
powers in North Africa in tandem with the US, in a way
that has caused even more deaths among innocent
civilians.”
The
arbitrary way the UN resolution is being carried out, he
warned, has led to “an increased threat to international
security instead of containing it.”
He
said, “What was essentially a domestic conflict,
resulting from an armed uprising, has now become an
international one.
“By
intervening in a domestic conflict on the side of one
party, the states that undertook to enforce the
resolution… have further fuelled the conflict and
brought about a situation that may lead to the
disintegration of Libya, with the prospect of long-term
instability in the entire North African and
Mediterranean region.”
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FOLLOWUP:
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